County receives bikes for kids

Dave Hemwood pushes a bicycle into the Job and Family Services building Tuesday in downtown Lancaster. Nearly 50 bicycles were donated to the agency to give out to clients this Christmas.(Photo: Matthew Berry/Eagle-Gazette)Buy Photo

LANCASTER - There will be at least 48 happy children this Christmas after Bike Lady, Inc., donated that many bicycles Tuesday to the Fairfield County Job and Family Services to distribute among those it serves.

JFS case workers will present the bicycles to children in adoptive homes, foster homes or other family situations. The bicycles each come with a lock and a helmet. The case workers helped decide which families were in need of a bicycle, then the JFS contacted Bike Lady with the list.

"I'm in the mission for the kids," said Bike Lady, Inc., founder Kate Koch. "This is also a happy day for the case workers who must deal with a lot of unhappy days."

Koch said her organization, which is based 27 miles north of Lancaster in Blacklick, will donate 1,645 bikes throughout 30 Ohio counties this year.

She got the idea partly from her brother, who runs a Toys for Tots organization in Cleveland.

The Huffy bikes are paid for from private and corporate donations and sent to Ohio prisons in Orient, Toledo and Grafton, where inmates put them together.

"This is also good for the inmates who assemble the bikes," Koch said.

She said about 60 percent of the money for the bikes come from private donations, with the other 40 percent coming from individual donations. The donations are mostly from central Ohio.

Koch said she started the program eight years ago after she adopted two children. She has distributed about 6,500 bikes throughout Ohio so far after donating 26 that first year.

"It's just gotten bigger and bigger," Koch said.

This is the fourth year Bike Lady, Inc., has donated bikes to Fairfield County children. The charity uses various central Ohio companies who donate their time to deliver the bikes.

Several JFS employees helped unload the bikes from a truck in about 20 minutes. Case workers can immediately start delivering the bikes to their clients. The bikes are unwrapped, so the families can wrap them if they choose and can also choose to not tell their children where the bike came from.